gs--would you remind him that it is at Eliston's that he has to
pick me up? There are attractions about!" added Mrs. Potten
mysteriously, "and he may forget! Poor Bernard, such a good fellow in
his way, but so wild, and he sometimes talks as if he were almost a
conscientious objector, only he's too old for it to matter. I don't
allow him to argue with me. I can't follow it--and don't want to. But
he's a dear fellow."

Lady Dashwood walked into the post-office. "Thank goodness, I can think
now," she said to herself, as she went to a desk.

The wire ran as follows:--

"Sorry. Saturday quite impossible. Writing."

It was far from cordial, but cordial Lady Dashwood had no intention of
being. She meant to do her duty and no more by Belinda. Duty would be
hard enough. And when she wrote the letter, what should she say?

"If only something would happen, some providential accident," thought
Lady Dashwood, unconscious of the contradiction involved in the terms.
The word "providential" caused her to go on thinking. If there were such
things as ghosts, the "ghost" of the previous night might have been
providentially sent--sent as a warning! But the thought was a foolish
one.

"In any case," she argued, "what is the good of warnings? Did any one
ever take warning? No, not even if one rose from the dead to deliver
it."

She was too tired to walk about and too tired to want to go again into
the Sale room and talk to people. She went back to the rooms, climbed
the stairs slowly and then sat down to wait till it was time to go to
Mrs. Harding's. Perhaps May would soon have finished seeing Christ
Church and come and join her. Her presence was always a comfort.

It was a comfort, perhaps rather a miserable comfort, to Lady Dashwood
because she had begun to suspect that May too was suffering, not
suffering from wounded vanity, for May was almost devoid of vanity, but
from--and here Lady Dashwood leaned back in her chair and closed her
eyes. It was a strange thing that both Jim and May should have allowed
themselves to be martyrised, only May's marriage had been so brief and
had ended so worthily, the shallow young man becoming suddenly compelled
to bear the burden of Empire, and bearing it to the utmost; but Gwen
would meander along, putting all her burdens on other people; and she
would live for ever!

CHAPTER XVI

SEEING CHRIST CHURCH

Boreham had been very successful that afternoon. He had managed to
secure Mrs.